ICOs with the highest profits

22 June 2018

Initial coin offering has become a popular way to attract extra money to finance future operations of a startup, while enabling investors to get access to the assets of a new company through the holdings of ‘tokens’. Despite skepticism of some head-liners, ICOs go on enjoying the hype, and it is not just hot air, because a great number of projects successfully raise millions of dollars.

Filecoin

Filecoin was created by Protocol Labs on the basis of InterPlanetary File System, being the first Initial coin offering compliant with the U.S. regulations. This open source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system successfully raised $257 million in the ICO held in September 2017, while during the tokens pre-sale it managed to raise $52 million from venture capital giants such as Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Digital Currency Group.

Tezos

Tezos, a cryptocurrency aiming to address the problems of governance and decision-making was founded by Kathleen Breitman and is based in San Francisco, California. The ICO held by this project successfully collected more than $232 million in July 2017. Tezos technology represents a self-amending distributed ledger able to create smart contracts and allowing its users to take their own decisions on the protocol upgrading, which is believed to bring democratic character to the Tezos blockchain.

EOS

EOS was allegedly founded and is developed by Block.one private company. The project represents a cryptocurrency and blockchain working as a smart contract system specifically designed for deploying decentralized applications with an ambitious aim to become a ‘better’ Ethereum. The project has successfully raised more than $185 million during the ICO started last June.

Sirin Labs

Sirin Labs, a smartphone manufacturer, established in 2013 by Kenges Rakishev, Moshe Hogeg, and Tal Cohen in the United Kingdom. This April a report was made that a subsidiary of Foxconn will be developing and building a blockchain-powered smartphone for Sirin Labs to be known as Finney. The shipping will start in October 2018 at the price of $1,000, and Sirin Labs said that more than 25,000 Finney smartphones have been preordered to date. During the ICO held last December, the project successfully raised $157 million apart from $70 million raised before the token sales.

Telegram

Telegram went down in history as the most profitable ICO project raising $1.7 billion during the two token pre-sales. In late March it became known that Pavel Durov reported to the SEC about the results of the second fundraising round using the token crowdsales. The second round of the ICO attracted about $850 million from 94 investors under the closed token sales project. The minimum investment amount for the round was $1 million. The information about the second round appeared in the media in late February, 2018.

During the presale round of the ICO, Telegram collected the same amount ($850 million) from 81 investors, while the applications for the presale totaled to $3.8 billion. According to the people with the knowledge of the matter, the company plans to hold the third round within this year. The price for one token will allegedly be $2 per a coin.

Dragon

Dragon Coin is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency targeting gambling industry and introduced by a Macau-based hotel and casino corporation. The cryptocurrency is based on ERC-20 standard and in 2017 it successfully raised $320 million during the ICO. Dragon Coin was launched as a best value for money to gamblers in China that usually pay high fees to companies for bypassing the Chinese regulations to take money for gambling.

Bancor

Bancor, a protocol for the creation of Smart Tokens, and a new standard for cryptocurrencies convertible directly through their smart contracts, was founded in 2016 by Eyal Hertzog, Galia Benartzi, Guy Ben-Artzi, and Yudi Levi. The project raised $153 million last June, and the list of investors included venture capital firms like Blockchain Capital and an individual investor, Tim Draper. Bancor protocol may be used by anyone for creating their own cryptocurrencies known as ‘smart tokens’, which can be easily converted into reserve tokens.